A Negro Love Song

MEanwhile the hainous and despightfull act
Of Satan done in Paradise, and how
Hee in the Serpent, had perverted Eve,
Her Husband shee, to taste the fatall fruit,
Was known in Heav'n; for what can scape the Eye
Of God All-seeing, or deceave his Heart
Omniscient, who in all things wise and just,
Hinder'd not Satan to attempt the minde

Happy Birthday Kenneth Koch/Feb 27 We went to all those places where they restore sadness and joy
and call it art. We were piloted by Auden who became
Unbearably acrimonious when we dropped off Senghor into the
steamy skies of his beloved West Africa. The termites and ants

—Was it for this
That one, the fairest of all Rivers, lov'd
To blend his murmurs with my Nurse's song,
And from his alder shades and rocky falls,
And from his fords and shallows, sent a voice
That flow'd along my dreams? For this, didst Thou,
O Derwent! travelling over the green Plains
Near my 'sweet Birthplace', didst thou, beauteous Stream

Catullus is my master and I mix
a little acid and a bit of honey
in his bowl love

is my subject & the lack of love
which lack is what makes evil a
poet must strike

Catullus could rub words so hard
together their friction burned a

And the angel Israfel, whose heart-strings are a lute, and who has the sweetest voice of all God’s creatures. —KORAN In Heaven a spirit doth dwell
“Whose heart-strings are a lute”;

Unlike the ashes that make their home with hot coals, snails prefer moist earth. Go on: they advance while gluing themselves to it with their entire bodies. They carry it, they eat it, they shit it. They go through it, it goes through them. It’s the best kind of interpenetration, as between tones, one passive and one active. The passive bathes and nourishes the active, which overturns the other while it eats.

(There is more to be said about snails. First of all their immaculate clamminess. Their sangfroid. Their stretchiness.)

One can scarcely conceive of a snail outside its shell and unmoving. The moment it rests it sinks down deep into itself. In fact, its modesty obliges it to move as soon as it has shown its nakedness and 
revealed its vulnerable shape. The moment it’s exposed, it moves on.

During periods of dryness they withdraw into ditches where it seems their bodies are enough to maintain their dampness. No doubt their neighbors there are toads and frogs and other ectothermic animals. But when they come out again they don’t move as quickly. You have to admire their willingness to go into the ditch, given how hard it is for them to come out again.

Note also that though snails like moist soil, they have no affection for places that are too wet such as marshes or ponds. Most assuredly they prefer firm earth, as long as it’s fertile and damp.

They are fond as well of moisture-rich vegetables and green leafy plants. They know how to feed on them leaving only the veins, cutting free the most tender leaves. They are hell on salads.

What are these beings from the depths of the ditches? Though snails love many of their trenches’ qualities they have every intention of leaving. They are in their element but they are also wanderers. And when they emerge into the daylight onto firm ground their shells will preserve their vagabond’s hauteur.

It must be a pain to have to haul that trailer around with them everywhere, but they never complain and in the end they are happy about it. How valuable, after all, to be able to go home any time, no matter where you may find yourself, eluding all intruders. It must be worth it.

You are a friend then, as I make it out,
Of our man Shakespeare, who alone of us
Will put an ass's head in Fairyland
As he would add a shilling to more shillings,
All most harmonious, — and out of his
Miraculous inviolable increase
Fills Ilion, Rome, or any town you like
Of olden time with timeless Englishmen;
And I must wonder what you think of him —
All you down there where your small Avon flows
By Stratford, and where you're an Alderman.
Some, for a guess, would have him riding back
To be a farrier there, or say a dyer;
Or maybe one of your adept surveyors;
Or like enough the wizard of all tanners.

"As certain also of your own poets have said"—
(Acts 17.28)
Cleon the poet (from the sprinkled isles,
Lily on lily, that o'erlace the sea
And laugh their pride when the light wave lisps "Greece")—
To Protus in his Tyranny: much health!

Kneel down, fair Love, and fill thyself with tears,
Girdle thyself with sighing for a girth
Upon the sides of mirth,
Cover thy lips and eyelids, let thine ears
Be filled with rumour of people sorrowing;
Make thee soft raiment out of woven sighs
Upon the flesh to cleave,
Set pains therein and many a grievous thing,
And many sorrows after each his wise
For armlet and for gorget and for sleeve.

O Love's lute heard about the lands of death,
Left hanged upon the trees that were therein;
O Love and Time and Sin,
Three singing mouths that mourn now underbreath,

Twice or thrice had I lov'd thee,
Before I knew thy face or name;
So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame
Angels affect us oft, and worshipp'd be;
Still when, to where thou wert, I came,
Some lovely glorious nothing I did see.
But since my soul, whose child love is,
Takes limbs of flesh, and else could nothing do,
More subtle than the parent is
Love must not be, but take a body too;
And therefore what thou wert, and who,
I bid Love ask, and now
That it assume thy body, I allow,
And fix itself in thy lip, eye, and brow.

Stranger, you who hide my love
In the curved cheek of a smile
And sleep with her upon a tongue
Of soft lies that beguile,
Your paradisal ecstasy
Is justified is justified
By hunger of the beasts beneath
The overhanging cloud

This is not a small voice
you hear this is a large
voice coming out of these cities.
This is the voice of LaTanya.
Kadesha. Shaniqua. This
is the voice of Antoine.
Darryl. Shaquille.
Running over waters

Do not allow me to sink, I said
To a top floating ribbon of kelp.
As I was lifted on each wave
And made to slide into the vale
I wanted not to drown. I wanted
To make it all right with my dear,
To tell my cat I’ll be away,
To have them all destroyed, the poems

See, Winter comes to rule the varied year,
Sullen and sad, with all his rising train—
Vapours, and clouds, and storms. Be these my theme,
These, that exalt the soul to solemn thought
And heavenly musing. Welcome, kindred glooms!
Congenial horrors, hail! With frequent foot,
Pleas’d have I, in my cheerful morn of life,
When nurs’d by careless solitude I liv’d
And sung of Nature with unceasing joy,
Pleas’d have I wander’d through your rough domain;
Trod the pure virgin-snows, myself as pure;
Heard the winds roar, and the big torrent burst;
Or seen the deep-fermenting tempest brew’d
In the grim evening-sky. Thus pass’d the time,
Till through the lucid chambers of the south

Duncan Gray came here to woo,
Ha, ha, the wooin o't!
On blythe Yule night when we were fou,
Ha, ha, the wooin o't!
Maggie coost her head fu high,
Look'd asklent and unco skeigh,
Gart poor Duncan stand abeigh;
Ha, ha, the wooin o't!

Duncan fleech'd, and Duncan pray'd,
Ha, ha, the wooin o't!
Meg was deaf as Ailsa Craig,
Ha, ha, the wooin o't!
Duncan sigh'd baith out and in,
Grat his een baith bleer't and blin',

All night I stumble through the fields of light,
And chase in dreams the starry rays divine
That shine through soft folds of the robe of night,
Hung like a curtain round a sacred shrine.

When daylight dawns I leave the meadows sweet
And come back to the dark house built of clay,
Over the threshold pass with lagging feet,
Open the shutters and let in the day.

Colin, why this mistake?
Why plead thy foolish love?
My heart shall sooner break
Than I a minion prove;
Nor care I half a rush,
No snare I spread for thee:
Go home, my friend, and blush
For love and liberty.

(from Julius Caesar, spoken by Marc Antony) Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,

The child is father of the man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.
(Wordsworth, "My Heart Leaps Up")

Fit the First
The Landing

"Just the place for a Snark!" the Bellman cried,
As he landed his crew with care;
Supporting each man on the top of the tide
By a finger entwined in his hair.

"Just the place for a Snark! I have said it twice:
That alone should encourage the crew.